Tag Archives: China

Keep squeezing the Chinese regime

Monitoring Chinese regime propaganda about the Wuhan Virus pandemic allows insights into the Communist Party leadership and can reveal vulnerabilities to guide American strategists.

That’s why we continue our extensive daily pandemic propaganda timeline.

Some of the most important conclusions to draw from the timeline to date have been the absurd lengths to which the Chinese government has covered up its role in unleashing the pandemic, insisted that the world praise the regime for its response, and attacked the United States government for insisting on holding the regime accountable.

We are now seeing fissures within the Chinese Communist Party leadership. That means the US should remain on the offensive to deepen those fissures and force the regime to take responsibility and be held accountable.

Even the propagandists say their propaganda has been a disaster

Now comes an unauthorized report out of China that the Party’s own Central Propaganda Department is struggling to avoid responsibility for the disinformation offensive it has unleashed worldwide.

The official propaganda has backfired so badly that the Department is trying to deflect blame for pushing the faulty Party line that it was instructed to push.

It reportedly issued an urgent notice recently – unusual in that the notice did not come in the name of Xi Jinping, which could indicate infighting or divisions within the CCP leadership. Chinascope has the story, translated and summarized from the original in Minghui. Highlights:

  • ‘Emergency notice’ to ‘suspend official CCP propaganda’ on virus immediately. “Minghui reported that, according to internal sources, the CCP Central Propaganda Department recently issued an ’emergency notice’ to media in mainland China to suspend the official CCP propaganda on the Wuhan virus immediately.”
  • Propagandists unwilling to take responsibility. “Analysts interpret the notice as an indication that the CCP Central Propaganda Department is not willing to assume responsibility for the previous CCP propaganda guidelines.”
  • International blame against CCP seen as trigger. “It is believed that the notice was due to the claims filed against China and to the increased advocacy from the international community to hold China accountable for the cover-up of the pandemic.”
  • ‘Brakes must be applied immediately.’ “According to the emergency notice, ‘brakes must be applied immediately’ on all propaganda that advertises how remarkable the Chinese anti-pandemic effort is and how ‘inferior’ the anti-pandemic efforts in foreign countries are. The notice also stated that this was ‘a painful decision made by its senior leadership based on the current situation.’”
  • Possible internal rift, but CCP not seen as changing. “Analysts believe that the CCP Central Propaganda Department is attempting to avoid being a scapegoat in the future. Some experts believe that this may be the result of an internal rift and that the CCP will not change.”
  • Anti-US finger-pointing and cover-up did more harm than good. “Since the outbreak of the Wuhan virus in January this year, the CCP has engaged in a major propaganda campaign setting off another anti-America wave, while doing everything it could possibly do to cover up that which allowed the coronavirus to become a global pandemic.”

Bottom line: President Donald Trump and the rest of his team, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, are exactly correct in laying the blame squarely on the Chinese Communist regime. Beijing and its apologists here and abroad have been begging the administration to stop. Now is no time to slow down. It’s time to squeeze even harder.

DECISION BRIEF: Time to decide how Chinese Communist Party pays reparations for pandemic

Decision: Anticipating that the US will hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable for the Wuhan Virus pandemic, the US should next decide how to enforce that accountability. The Chinese Communist Party must immediately pay reparations for human and economic damages.

Reason: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) treats China and the Chinese people like property. The CCP manufactured the circumstances that unleashed the Wuhan virus to plague the world. The Chinese people are not to blame. The CCP therefore must pay reparations immediately, with or without its consent. The American taxpayer must not be forced to pay for the CCP’s damages to them. The US must require reparations and punitive damages immediately, without tying up the bulk of damages in endless and costly litigation.

Background: As Xi Jinping consolidated control, the CCP overrode China’s existing automated infectious disease alert system that had been designed to prevent Party political interference, thus disabling that system from issuing an early warning. It persecuted doctors, censored news, scrubbed the Internet, and even made journalists and whistleblower health professionals disappear, and would not allow the US to send scientists and experts to Wuhan in the early days of the epidemic.

The Party put its own political interests ahead of public health concerns of China’s own citizens and allowed the virus to spread worldwide. A US diplomatic cable to its embassies abroad said, “The Party cared more about its reputation than its own people’s suffering.”

Xi Jinping hid for three weeks while the virus spread, doing nothing until the Party developed a strategy to make him look decisive. Part of the Party strategy was to wage a global disinformation and propaganda campaign to deflect blame, direct blame on the US government and military, and glorify Xi as a hero who bought time for the world. This campaign allowed the virus to spread.

The Trump Administration has already fixed blame. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo determined in February, “The Chinese Communist Party poses a substantial threat to our health and way of life, as the Wuhan virus outbreak clearly has demonstrated” and is a “malign influence” worldwide.

Even leading opposition voices like the New York Times have determined that the CCP is responsible for the pandemic. American lawmakers and close US allies have called for a day of “reckoning” with China, and for the CCP to pay reparations.

What we know: While no credible evidence yet shows that the Chinese regime deliberately created the Wuhan virus as a bioweapon, top British officials and scientists are beginning to accept the idea that it escaped from a Wuhan laboratory. The CCP has weaponized the pandemic after the fact to strengthen its geopolitical position against the US and other countries. This pattern fits into a broader context that includes:

  • Beijing continues to wage an extremely aggressive espionage campaign against American medical research institutions and hospitals.
  • China’s unrelenting overall espionage costs the US an estimated $600 billion a year.
  • As the pandemic unfolded between January 20 and March 11, the Chinese government ran a massive hacking operation against US defense, government, telecom, healthcare, finance, petrochemical, transportation, and other networks.
  • Beijing has mapped out American political institutions at the federal, state, and local levels to exploit their vulnerabilities, spy on them, extort concessions out of them, and to induce them to act in ways damaging to US national security.
  • The CCP has tried to censor the world by saying that that any criticism of it would worsen the pandemic.
  • By late March, the Chinese Communist Party militarized its disinformation and propaganda through the People’s Liberation Army’s information warfare outlets.

The bottom line: Now is the time for the US government and private sector, and partners worldwide, to require reparations from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to pay for the damage it inflicted. Every policy should be developed to ease the burdens of the Chinese people and help them recover from CCP abuse. If some options are not practical under present law, the law should be changed quickly. “CCP” is shorthand here for the Party itself, Party members of a certain rank and their associates, companies or properties owned or controlled by the CCP or its members, and the like. Options include:

  • Cancel all public and private debts to CCP banks, businesses, investment funds, and other entities.
  • Protect defaulting private citizens and companies from adverse credit actions.
  • Remove sovereign immunity of the Chinese government and CCP-related companies in US courts. This will permit Americans at their own initiative to sue the regime and CCP for reparations.
  • Impose high tariffs on importation of all goods manufactured or assembled under CCP authority of, or in CCP-owned or -operated facilities worldwide.
  • Sanction all CCP officials of high rank, under Magnitsky Act-style sanctions.
  • Seize and sell CCP property including companies, funds, properties, real estate, aircraft, oceangoing vessels, or shares therein.
  • Issue letters of marque and reprisal. As provided in the Constitution, Congress should issue letters of marque and reprisal to private American entities to recover CCP property anywhere in the world at their own initiative and risk, and share the wealth with the American taxpayers.
  • Expel China from World Trade Organization as long as it is ruled by CCP and admit Taiwan, or leave WTO.
  • Break up belt-and-road; relieve poor countries from CCP debt trap. This will create massive financial relief worldwide, break Beijing’s global strategy, and generate goodwill to the US.

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China’s glass house: Beijing is interfering in our 2020 election. What are we going to do about it?

The Chinese regime’s secret sponsorship of a paid Facebook campaign to attack President Donald Trump during an election campaign gives the US the right to respond in-kind.

Communist China has no elections except to ratify the Party, of course, but its interference in the US political process – one of a larger strategy of manipulating the American political system at all levels – obliges the US to defend itself in a similar manner.

London’s Sunday Telegraph published a report that three Chinese state and Communist Party propaganda outlets has run “millions” of paid promotions to attack the US and President Trump. The three outlets are:

  • Xinhua, a wire service founded by the Chinese Communist Party and now run by the state;
  • China Central TV, a state-run unit of the China Media Group; and
  • Global Times, an English-language unit of the Chinese Communist Party’s official People’s Daily (the analogue of the Soviet Communist Party’s Pravda, versus the Soviet government’s companion Izvestia).

“The ads, viewed millions of times, touted China’s efforts against Covid-19, downplayed its national epidemic, portrayed Mr. Trump as erroneous and racist, and suggested that the virus could have originated in the United States,” according to the Telegraph.

“However, all of them initially ran without political warning, which allowed them to hide information about who they were targeting and sometimes to allow them to circumvent Facebook’s strict rules on political advertising,” the Telegraph said.

Chinese Communist Party wants Pompeo out, hints it wants Trump out, too

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the bad cop to Trump’s good cop toward China, is Enemy Number One on Beijing’s political hit list. The Chinese regime has made it clear that it wants Pompeo out and replaced by someone more pliable. Xi Jinping’s messaging outlets have vilified Trump and make it clear that the Communist Party would like to see him replaced, too.

Global Times hinted on April 4 that unless Trump becomes more accommodationist to Beijing, the Chinese regime might take measures to help defeat him for re-election: “If the US maintains the mentality of geopolitical competition with China instead of seeking help from China, the Americans would suffer ultimately and Trump’s reelection would be seriously affected. . . .”

Coincides with partisan attacks on Trump over handling of pandemic

The Chinese government-sponsored social media attacks on Trump coincides with strategy development on behalf of his lead campaign rival, Joseph Biden, to use the pandemic as a domestic political weapon.

It borrows rhetoric from Trump’s leading opponents, including Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who have portrayed Trump’s response to the deadly outbreak as xenophobic and racist.

When Trump announced tough restrictions on travel from China and other countries to contain the Wuhan Virus spread, his opponents pounced.

Pelosi issued a press release savaging the restrictions as “outrageous, un-American,” a threat to “our security, our values, and the rule of law,” “callous,” “cruel,” “dangerous,” “bigoted,” hateful, and more. “We will never allow hatred or bigotry to define our nation or destroy our values,” Pelosi said.

The next day, Biden said on Twitter, “We are in the midst of a crisis with the coronavirus. We need to lead the way with science — not Donald Trump’s record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering.”

Chinese government repeats the themes

The Chinese government-sponsored messaging on Facebook and Instagram often repeated these themes. According to the Telegraph, “They often cited Western experts and media sources who supported their story.” The report provided no details.

Beijing has mapped out and targeted American politicians, Democrat and Republican, liberal, moderate, and conservative.

In a historic speech to the bipartisan National Governors Association, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described in detail how the Chinese government had mapped out America’s political system and elected officials, down to the state and local levels, for the purpose of manipulating them to adopt policies and statements beneficial to the Chinese regime.

So far only one senior elected Democrat has blamed the Chinese Communist Party for being responsible for the pandemic. That Democrat, Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, didn’t last long. Two days after being the sole Democrat cosponsor of a resolution to hold the Chinese Communist Party liable for the deadly outbreak, Moulton abruptly withdrew his support, citing that “the resolution has caused division” and calling Trump a xenophobe.

The political interests of Trump’s domestic opponents and the geopolitical interests of the Chinese Communist Party have thus converged. As our daily Chinese pandemic propaganda tracker shows, Trump’s opponents and the Chinese Communists have adapted one another’s themes.

What the Center proposed for Russia’s election meddling applies to China

Any foreign interference in America’s democratic process is intolerable. The Center for Security Policy made recommendations to President Obama in August, 2016 about stopping Russia from interfering and deterring further interference through an aggressive “glass house” strategy.

That strategy was to cause Vladimir Putin personal political pain and play on divisions within his inner circle. “For the sake of America’s democratic society,” we wrote in Forbes, “Obama must strike back hard at Putin and his inner circle. Now.”

The Obama administration ignored the recommendation, and did nothing to retaliate or deter, and we all know the aftermath.

In Putin’s Reset, edited by Fred Fleitz and published shortly before the 2016 election, the Center made this recommendation:

Putin’s unnecessarily aggressive info-centric actions give the U.S. and its partners the pretext to exploit the potentially profound vulnerabilities of the secret-police regime, and the fragilities that, if exploited, could widen many existing splits within the Putin leadership itself and the Russian Federation at large.

All this, of course, lowers the threshold of conflict to the level of classical espionage, propaganda, and subversion, at which the Kremlin has excelled for the past century, with a modern digital twist. The U.S. and its allies generally have opted not to engage, out of the quaint “gentlemen don’t read other people’s mail” principle, or more likely, simple ignorance about what to do or how. After a long period of not wanting to see, the West finds itself surprised and alarmed at being on the receiving end of what historically is a simple and manageable method of statecraft.

We advised the incoming Trump team, shortly before the inauguration in January, 2017, to “up the ante on Russian subversion in America.”

“The real scandal about Russian subversion of the American political process is that the nation’s leadership has known about it for years and done nothing,” the January 4, 2017, Forbes article said. “Now is the time to put an end to it.” Here are the recommendations from that time:

As part of making America great again, the Trump administration must smack down foreign covert political warfare once and for all. It should instruct the entire intelligence community to prepare a definitive annual National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, to reach the most accurate professional consensus on the scope and cumulative effects of foreign subversion of the United States and its allies. The NIE timeframe should begin at least as far back as the longest-serving federal official has been in office. Separately, Trump should assemble an interagency task force to develop a strategy to identify, monitor and neutralize foreign propaganda, political warfare and subversion from any source. A special hybridized team should provide the president with effective strategies and methods of deterrence and retaliation.

The same should apply to China then – and especially now:

Trump should handle America’s foreign adversaries the way he treats some of his personal opponents: through the specter or acts of exposure, humiliation and destruction. This is where Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and others are especially vulnerable. An easy, off-the-shelf tool is the Magnitsky Act, which the U.S. has used to put the financial squeeze on individual figures close to the Kremlin. The best way to check against foreign misbehavior is to squeeze the ruling inner circles financially. That will make powerful oligarchs pay high personal prices for their regimes’ meddling in American internal affairs, and incentivize them to pressure their leaders to become more accommodating to the new American leadership.

The Trump Administration ended up creating an interagency team in 2018 to deal specifically with Chinese government espionage and subversion against the United States. We have seen the fruits of that team in recent months.

Now is the time to turn up the volume and go after the Chinese Communist Party as an institution. The Party’s behavior is so egregious that the time has come to take it on and help China’s corrupt Communist kleptocracy collapse. This is a historic window of opportunity to implement a decisive strategy of peaceful power. The Trump Administration shows signs that it agrees.

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China militarizes pandemic disinformation & propaganda

Beijing has now militarized its pandemic propaganda. The Chinese military has laid out a strong, harshly anti-US line, blaming the United States for the worldwide coronavirus pandemic and saying that the world should be grateful to the Chinese regime for its generosity and sacrifices.

This line is important to understand so that it can be detected, exposed, and refuted as it sinks into mainstream journalism and political discourse in the US and worldwide. It is also important to understand so as to avoid comments and gaffes that the CCP can use against us.

The People’s Liberation Army spelled out its case in English for non-Chinese speakers to follow, building on themes officially set by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP is still stinging from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s masterful indictment of the Party as being responsible for the deadly pandemic.

Here are the PLA’s main themes, which the CCP has already spelled out elsewhere, as the Center has documented. All quotations are from the same March 30 China Military Online article:

  • China was responsible and open from the start. “China has regularly informed the US of the epidemic information and its prevention and control measures since January 3, but the US didn’t announce a ‘state of national emergency’ until March 13,” ChinaMil.com says. Points:
  • Trump is shifting blame ‘in a racist manner.’ “Trump has downplayed the epidemic repeatedly in public, the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) has reacted slowly, the government’s information release is neither open nor transparent, and some officials have been trying to shift the blame to China and divert public attention in a racist manner.”
  • Trump wasted ‘precious time bought by China for the world.’ “The Trump administration’s lack of action and responsibility and its squandering of the precious time bought by China for the world at immense sacrifices are the root causes of the massive outbreak in the US.”
  • Trump made ‘improper and misleading remarks about the pandemic.’ Trump is the source of disinformation – not China; he “send serious information,” the article says, adding, “The State of Utah coronavirus task force labeled what Trump said as disinformation. . . .”
  • America’s ‘lack of openness and transparency’ means USA is responsible. “Since the epidemic began to sweep across its homeland, the US government has taken a self-deceiving approach in total disregard of the US citizens’ and the international community’s concerns. It has been berated by the international community for ceasing to announce key information, including COVID-19 testing, its retarded responses, and non-transparent information, which are highly irresponsible for the international efforts against the pandemic.” This section is subheads, “Lack of openness and transparency in pandemic information indicates irresponsibility to the international community.”
  • American health system’s ‘slow response is a direct cause’ of pandemic. “The [US] health system’s slow response is a direct cause for the quick spread of the pandemic,” the PLA article says.
  • Trump’s budget cuts are to blame for pandemic. “The disbanding of the global health security and bio-defense office by the Trump administration in 2018 is believed to be one reason why the country has reacted so slowly to the pandemic,” the PLA says, purporting to cite Dr. Anthony Fauci and others.
  • US pulled CDC worker from China and cut CDC budget. “In July 2019, the Trump administration revoked the position held by Linda Quick who was assigned by the American CDC to work in China, and no other expert was assigned since. If the position were not revoked, the notifications from China to the US in early January might have attracted enough attention at the White House. Besides, the American CDC announced, during the COVID-19 outbreak, its budget report for the fiscal year of 2021, which fell by 28.7% to USD5.56 billion from USD6.84 billion in 2020.”
  • Trump protects ‘the wealthy and the powerful’ in major human rights abuse.”The US response to the COVID-19 pandemic is a total pandemonium, but what’s most outrageous is that rich people and celebrities have priority to testing, according to an article published by New York Times on March 18. Hollywood stars can quickly book an outpatient doctor over the phone, many A-listers go to private clinics, and those who have been tested are close with the president, including Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republic senator and Trump’s golf buddy, and Mark Meadows, a Republican member of the North Carolina House of Representatives and the future White House Chief of Staff. When asked whether the well-connected should get expedited testing, Trump answered at a White House press conference ‘perhaps that’s been the story of life. That does happen on occasion.’ . . . While getting tested seems so easy for those with a deep pocket or connections, it is almost impossible for ordinary Americans.”
  • America has abandoned its founding principles and UN ideals. “The US has posed as a world guardian of human rights and prided itself on that, claiming equality and liberty to be its core values since the first day it was founded. However, the double standards it practiced during the COVID-19 prevention and control have violated ordinary Americans’ right to health.It is an immoral defiance of human rights that is against the Declaration of Independence, the cornerstone of the nation, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Constitution of the World Health Organization.
  • Trump is ‘politicizing the pandemic,’ ‘shifting blame,’ and ‘shirking responsibilities.’ “The Trump administration has been using the pandemic to attack political rivals at home and viciously smear China in the international community.Trump took domestic criticisms of the White House’s poor response to the epidemic as a political movement orchestrated by the Democratic Party, calling coronavirus ‘the Democrats’ new hoax.’ Mick Mulvaney, acting White House chief of staff, even told conservative activists directly that journalists are so interested in the pandemic because they think that’s going to make the president step down.”
  • ‘The virus is seen as a weapon’ against POTUS. “FOX News commented ‘increasingly for President Donald Trump, a member of his family, and his administration officials, the virus is being seen as a weapon the president’s enemies hope to use against him,’ while CNN said, ‘Pence’s habit of repeatedly pouring praise over the President’s role in the crisis so far … in itself politicized the response effort.'”
  • New York Times seen as ‘conservative media’ accusing CCP of human rights abuses. “Outwardly, some American officials and conservative media smeared China’s anti-virus efforts under the disguise of ‘democracy and human rights’ and stigmatized the country. New York Times called China’s city lockdown ‘undemocratic,’ ‘incomprehensible’ and ‘violating human rights,’ and US government officials took turns in making racist remarks against China.”
  • Trump allies are ignoring what UN’s WHO tells us all to say. “Pompeo and McCarthy kept turning a blind eye to WHO’s rules on virus nomenclature, Trump personally changed ‘coronavirus’ in his speech into ‘Chinese virus,’ and the White House is launching a communications plan across multiple federal agencies that focuses on accusing Beijing of orchestrating a ‘cover-up’ and creating a global pandemic.”
  • The virus isn’t from China. “Coronavirus was first identified in China, but that didn’t mean it originated in China,” the PLA says.
  • American politicians are putting their money first. PLA devotes space to attacking Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) for dumping $1.7 million in stock “in early and mid-February before the epidemic broke out and the stock market collapsed, while all the time reassuring the public that the epidemic could be kept well under control.” No criticism of Burr’s colleague, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who reportedly made similar transactions but is soft on CCP.
  • America is greedy and selfish, while the world should be grateful to China. “In the face of the pandemic, certain American officials put making money before saving lives at the expense of public health for all Americans. China’s powerful and effective measures have gained precious time for the world to prepare. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus praised China for its transparent and timely information sharing and said the world should respect and thank China for its anti-virus efforts.”

Pompeo rallies G7 to counter Chinese Communist Party disinformation

For the first time in a generation, an American secretary of state has worked with foreign leaders to aggressively coordinate a strategy against foreign state-sponsored disinformation. Secretary Mike Pompeo worked with six of America’s closest allies and economic partners to counter Communist China’s shrill disinformation campaign against the US over the coronavirus.

Pompeo told reporters on March 25 of his impromptu teleconference with his G7 counterparts. The G7 is the group of the world’s seven most advanced economies, all of which are military allies. In addition to the US, the members are Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

Pompeo left no room for doubt that the Trump Administration is targeting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The secretary of state had been building up the nation’s strategic response to CCP disinformation and propaganda as the Center for Security Policy described on March 22 and March 25.

Pompeo indicated that he is coordinating resistance to CCP disinformation among the G7 member nations. He repeatedly went after the “Communist Party” – not the Chinese government – and made a distinction between the CCP and the Chinese people. He went out of his way to say “Wuhan Virus” three times, showing the regime that he would not be cowed by its insistence that he not call it by its place of origin.

Here are the highlights of Pompeo’s historic comments as they concern China:

  • G7 is unified against CCP, Russia, Iran, North Korea. “First, we [in the G-7 meeting] spent a substantial amount of time on threats posed by authoritarian states.”
  • CCP a ‘substantial threat to our health and way of life.’ “The Chinese Communist Party poses a substantial threat to our health and way of life, as the Wuhan virus outbreak clearly has demonstrated.”
  • CCP is a subversive threat to freedom. “The CCP also threatens to undermine the free and open order that has underpinned our mutual prosperity and safety in the G7 countries.”
  • CCP is ‘malign influence’ in world organizations & will be resisted. “I urged every one of the [G7] countries to work together to protect the UN and other organizations from its malign influence and authoritarianism.”
  • G7 has shared values that CCP opposes. “We G7 countries must promote our shared values of freedom, sovereignty, good governance, transparency, and accountability, and push the UN to uphold these principles as well.”
  • USA tried to work with CCP to fight the virus. “We’ve wanted to work with the Chinese Communist Party throughout this crisis – this crisis that began in Wuhan, China.”
  • CCP would not permit US to help on the ground. “We tried – you’ll remember – from the opening days to get our scientists, our experts on the ground there so that we could begin to assist in the global response to what began there in China, but we weren’t able to do that.  The Chinese Communist Party wouldn’t permit that to happen.”
  • Chinese regime knew. But it delayed sharing lifesaving information. “You’ll recall, too, at the beginning of this, when it was clear that this was an issue, China knew about it, they were the first country to know about the risk to the world from this virus, and they repeatedly delayed sharing that information with the globe.”
  • US wants to help everyone, including China, recover from ‘Wuhan virus.’ “So yes, we desperately want to work with every country around the world.  This is a global pandemic; this is something the United States wants to work with every country, including China, to figure out how to resolve to keep as many people alive, as many people as healthy, and then to restore our economies that have been decimated by the Wuhan virus.”
  • And the US wants to help the Chinese people, too. “So we are – we are prepared to work with them, we’re prepared to assist them. We want good things for the Chinese people as well.”
  • US is coordinating G7 response to CCP disinformation. “There was a lot of discussion today amongst the G7 about the intentional disinformation campaign that China has been and continues to be engaged in.  You see it.  You see it in the social media.  You see it in remarks from senior people inside the Chinese Communist Party talking about whether this was a US – US brought to China.  I mean, this is crazy talk.  And every member of the G7 today saw that – this disinformation campaign.”
  • Chinese international aid isn’t very much. “China now making small sales of product around the world and claiming that they are now the white hat in what has taken place here.”
  • CCP disinformation diverted G7 from addressing pandemic. “This isn’t a time for blame; this is a time to solve this global problem. We are focused on that today.  It’s where the G7 members spent all of their time.  But every one of the nations that was at that meeting this morning was deeply aware of the disinformation campaign that the Chinese Communist Party is engaged in to try and deflect from what has really taken place here.”
  • G7 members may have tactical differences but are united on strategy. “And with respect to the statement, I always think about these meetings the right answer is to make sure we have the same message coming out of it.  I am confident that when you hear the other six foreign ministers speak, they will have a common understanding of what we talked about today and we will talk about the things that we have agreement on, and I’m sure they’ll express a handful of places – like the JCPOA [Iran nuclear deal] – where we have tactical differences about – to achieve our strategic outcomes.”
  • G7 is united on ‘Wuhan virus’ and economic recovery. “Make no mistake about it, everyone in that meeting this morning was very focused on making sure that we not only solve the health crisis associated with the Wuhan virus but also the economic challenges that face the globe as we confront it as well.”

The full text of Pompeo’s March 25 remarks appears here.

Another pestilence from China is killing off our agriculture

It’s been going on for years, but few have paid attention. Well before the global coronavirus plague, Florida is suffering another pestilence from China — a bacteria that’s killing the Sunshine State’s biggest cash crop.

Florida citrus is in freefall. This is a catastrophe for the state, and a public health and homeland security issue for the nation.

Our Senior Analyst for Strategy, Dr J Michael Waller, writes about the problem and an inexpensive possible off-the-shelf solution in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

The plague from China is called “citrus greening,” known as HLB after its Chinese name huang long bing.

Florida citrus producers and state officials responded to HLB ten years ago by creating the Citrus Research and Development Foundation (CRDF), whose mission is to “Advance disease and production research and product development activities to ensure the survival and competitiveness of Florida’s citrus growers through innovation.”

After spending $150 million in taxpayer- and industry-funded research to defeat HLB, CRDF has failed. “Once a tree is infected, there is no cure,” warns the US Department of Agriculture.

HLB is decimating our citrus groves. An inexpensive, off-the-shelf solution has shown promise for years, but the bureaucratized and politicized Florida institution responsible for testing has sat on its hands.

Read the full story here in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

The latest Party line: Criticism of Xi Jinping’s regime will worsen pandemic

The latest line from the Beijing is that criticism of the Chinese Communist Party from anywhere in the world will only serve to extend the agony of the global pandemic.

The new party line came on March 25 in the CCP’s authoritative People’s Daily a week after the Trump Administration started holding the CCP responsible for the worldwide spread of the deadly disease, and a day after Secretary of State Pompeo outlined the administration’s new approach.

The Center for Security Policy has been carefully monitoring CCP’s propaganda internally and to the world, and chronicling it with Chinese government actions, statements and policies from the Trump administration, and reports and commentaries in the western media.

The March 25 propaganda line shows an insecure Chinese regime that portrays itself as the protector of all the Chinese people, a responsible and generous citizen of the world that seeks the best for everyone, and as a falsely accused, innocent victim of the pandemic.

The party line is important to understand so that we in democratic societies can recognize it, understand what it means, identify how it is repeated in our open political cultures and who does the repeating, and counter it.

Main party line: All the world except Trump is thankful to China

Several CCP outlets have been publishing endless thanks from around to China and praise for its leadership. Many of the expressions are real, and many come from individuals who are not identified. The theme is to isolate anyone like President Trump and his government who criticize the CCP or seek to hold it accountable, and repeat the theme that China under the Communist Party can do no wrong.

The March 25 People’s Daily article, under the pen name Zhong Seng that is traditionally used to indicate a CCP statement on foreign policy, makes these points for party loyalists and fellow travelers to follow:

  • ‘Some’ in US are discriminatory & ‘pass the buck to China.’ “Some people in the US are obsessed with rude and unreasonable practices . . . . They intentionally fanned up the ‘political virus’ with discriminatory remarks in an attempt to pass the buck to China.” (Flashback: Being’s Central China TV station was one of the first to call the pestilence the “Wuhan Virus” as early as January 9, and official media kept using the term until the CCP changed its line in late February.)
  • ‘Wrongful’ criticism of China’s low transparency and for holding China responsible. “They wrongfully criticized China for a low level of transparency and openness regarding the COVID-19 information sharing, and evilly fabricated rumor that China should be responsible for the spread of COVID-19 in the US. Such conducts are condemnable.”
  • Evil to have ‘innocent’ China pay for the destruction. “What’s worse, these people even asked China to pay for the loss suffered by the US during the epidemic, which is nothing but engaging in evil doings and malicious discrimination of the innocent.”
  • US must repent. “The US side needs to reflect on what it has done to prevent and control the virus in the past two months.”
  • China impeded nothing and offered to help US. The article recounts a litany of US and Chinese statements and exchanges (most of which were only of protocol or other superficial purpose or value) in an attempt to show “that China has not impeded the US efforts on coronavirus control, but offered the US assistance in this regard.”
  • Critics of Chinese regime are ‘heartless.’ “Those US politicians stigmatizing China are totally heartless.”
  • US is to blame for its own delays. “The US should blame itself for difficulties it has encountered in fighting against COVID-19.”
  • CCP won the world valuable time. “It is globally recognized that China has won valuable time for the world to fight coronavirus with its achievements in epidemic prevention and control. . . . The US media outlets know how ineffective their government has been in front of the epidemic.”
    • Cites ex-Clinton/Obama official and Henry Kissinger chair: “Kurt Michael Campbell, formerly Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs of the US, said bluntly that China’s extremely strict epidemic control measures have won the US a lot of time, but it’s not clear wither the US has made effective use of the time.”
    • Cites World Health Organization. “The World Health Organization (WHO) has repeatedly expressed that China, by adopting forceful measures against the virus, is protecting the lives of the Chinese people and people of the world.”
  • Communist China is a helpful and generous world citizen. “China, sharing a common destiny with the world, actively offered assistance to other countries after the epidemic broke out overseas. The country has dispatched experts and donated prevention materials to affected countries, and exchanged virus control experience and treatment plans with the world, deepening international cooperation on virus control.”
  • The whole world lauds, admires, and thanks Communist China. “To laud China’s actions, admire China’s responsibility, and thank China’s assistance has become the mainstream voice of the globe.”
  • US is a slacker and a back-stabber. The US “owes money to WHO, “planned to halve” its WHO funding in 2021, and “when the epidemic broke out in china, the US acted as an onlooker, pointing fingers at Chinese prevention and control measures and even giving a stab in the back.”
  • By ‘smearing’ China for his own political gains, Trump undermines the world. “Now, as the epidemic satiation has worsened in the U.S., certain people there started to blame everyone but the U.S. itself. To smear China out of selfish political gains undermines the global efforts to fight the epidemic. The world knows who is responsible and who are not. As the WHO has warned, slandering other countries and people carries a greater risk than the virus itself.”
  • The Party line. “Some people in the United States are advised to lay down their political prejudices at an early date, isolate themselves from ‘political virus,’ and join the global war against the epidemic. Otherwise they will not only hinder anti-virus efforts at home, but also impede the global endeavor.”

Administration takes the right position blaming Chinese Communist Party for pandemic

The Trump Administration is taking precisely the right position on placing blame on the Chinese Communist Party for the new coronavirus pandemic. As the virus spread around the world from Wuhan, China, the CCP began an aggressive disinformation and propaganda campaign to blame the United States, Italy, and other countries.

This is a historic moment. The Trump Administration is the first since President Ronald Reagan to mount an aggressive defense against foreign state sponsors of destructive disinformation and propaganda and to call them out by name.

In a March 24 interview with radio host Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo placed everything in its proper context and hinted at further US action. Here are the highlights:

  • ‘Chinese Communist Party covered this up and delayed its response.’ “this virus began in Wuhan, China.  There’s no doubt about where it began.  Indeed, the Chinese Communist Party itself acknowledged that that’s where the virus began.  And unfortunately, the Chinese Communist Party covered this up and delayed its response in a way that has truly put thousands of lives at risk.”
  • CCP’s delay in information sharing harmed slowing the disease. “every day, every week matters in terms of how this information is transmitted around the world.  That is, when you share this information, the best scientists around the world can begin to work on it.  You can start all the processes, not only vaccines and things that mitigate, but you can begin to put in place the things that will cause the spread to be decreased.”
  • CCP actions ‘put all of us around the world’ at ‘unnecessary risk.’ “And it’s multiplicative, and so every day that the Chinese Communist Party sat on this information and didn’t do the right thing, and instead punished doctors who were attempting to alert the world about what was taking place there in Wuhan, increased the number of people who would be exposed, and thereby put all of us all around the world – and the Chinese people as well – put them at unnecessary risk, too.”
  • Will comment later on World Health Organization responsibility. Secretary Pompeo chose not to answer about the role that the United Nations’ World Health Organization played in pushing CCP propaganda, but hinted that he might address it later. Here’s the dialogue between Perkins and Pompeo:
    • Perkins: “… you may not want to go here, but I certainly want to make this statement, because the World Health Organization really played cover-up for China, basically going along with the Chinese line, and that was troubling to me.  This is an organization that’s supposed to be looking out for the global health, but yet they were buying the line that China was feeding, the cover-up and misinformation.”
    • Pompeo: “When we go back and look at this, we will, I think, all find out who was transparent, who was straightforward in the course of this moving forward.”
  • ‘The cover-up effort continues.’ “We can see – and you referred to this earlier – the cover-up effort continues; the disinformation campaign from Russia and Iran as well as China continues.  They’re talking about it coming from the U.S. Army and they’re saying maybe it began in Italy, all things to deflect responsibility.”
  • ‘The time will come for recriminations.’ “And while the time will come for recriminations, we’ve got to work our way forward.”
  • Every country must be transparent. “It’s still important to have transparency even today.  This is an ongoing global crisis, and we need to make sure that every country today is being transparent sharing what’s really going on, so that the global community, the global health care, infectious disease community can begin to work on this in a holistic way.”
  • Chinese Communist Party is still covering up and pushing disinformation. “My concern is that this cover-up, this disinformation that the Chinese Communist Party is engaged in, is still denying the world the information it needs so that we can prevent further cases or something like this from recurring again.”
  • Chinese Communist Party ‘created’ this ‘global instability.’ “The importance of transparency to human health and the global instability that is created when you have a Chinese Communist Party behaving in the way that it did is really a risky thing.  And we can all see that now; we can see it coming into play.”
  • CCP disinformation harms the people of China. Here, Pompeo takes on the purported outrage of progressive pundits and the CCP who call the administration racist for having used terms like “Wuhan Virus” and “China Virus.” Says Pompeo,”The people most harmed by Chinese disinformation, the fact that they covered this up early, were the people of Wuhan and Hubei, China.”
  • Iran regime has harmed its own people by embracing CCP. “Similarly, today in Iran, the people who are most harmed by Iran’s failure to acknowledge the problem and to accept the fact that they – fact that they allowed Chinese flights to continue to come into the country from Tehran when they knew they shouldn’t have, but they didn’t want to upset their Chinese friends, the people most harmed by that are their own people.”
  • People of China and Iran will hold their leaders responsible. “I think the people in those countries know this.  I think the people in those countries will ultimately hold their leaders responsible for this.”
  • CCP and Iran leaders are disinforming in order to save themselves. “And I think this, too, is why this disinformation campaign is taking place.  They want to try and deflect responsibility from the poor decisions that those leaders undertook.”
  • CCP’s actions have exposed America’s supply-chain vulnerability. “President Trump, from the beginning of our administration, made clear that the trade relationship with China was fundamentally unfair, it wasn’t reciprocal.”
    • “I think you can see that some of the supply chain challenges that we’ve had are a result of the fact that companies were operating their supply chains out of China but not here in the United States.  I think that’s part and parcel of the reciprocity that the President demanded.”
    • “So I do think as we wind our way out of the coronavirus issue, as we wind our way through this, I think we’ll have to make some very important decisions about exactly how these relationships ought to be structured.”
  • Sympathy for Chinese people, not Chinese Communist Party. “We want the Chinese people to be successful.  We – I am saddened by all of the deaths that took place in China.  These are tragic things.  We don’t mean ill towards any of them.”
  • Important to get US relationship with China ‘right.’ “. . . it’s fundamentally the case that we have to make sure that we do right by the American people, that we get this relationship not only with China but with every country right, so that we can ensure that we do right to protect and keep safe the American people the way President Trump committed to do.”
  • ‘Nailed it’ – Big difference between Chinese people & CCP. Pompeo stresses that the United States makes a sharp distinction between the Chinese people and the CCP. He draws the same distinction between the Iranian people and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Here’s the dialogue between Perkins and the secretary:
    • Perkins: “Well, there’s also – it’s important to draw the line of distinction between the Chinese Communist party, that regime, and the Chinese people.  The same thing in Iran.  It is – the people are not being represented by their governments in the way that most of them would like to see their international relationships.”
    • Pompeo: “Tony, I think you nailed it.  As I said, the people most harmed by this failure in leadership during this difficult time are the people of their own countries.  It has now spread across to the world.  But transparency and good governance, and the fundamental things that we do here in the United States that says we’re going to treat every human being with the dignity and respect that they deserve because of the fact that they are God-made, those are things that fundamentally separate us from regimes like that in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Chinese Communist Party.”

See full text of interview here.

Pandemics can fast forward the rise and fall of great powers

Originally posted on National Interest

As COVID-19 continues to spread in the United States, analysts are rightly focused on the possible medical and economic ramifications, but this pandemic is already shaping the most important geopolitical development of the twenty-first century: America’s great power rivalry with China.

How well Washington and Beijing manage the ramifications of the Coronavirus in the weeks ahead may determine who leads the international system decades hence.

After all, as I explain in a new book, global pandemics have contributed to the rise and fall of great powers in the past.

In the fifth century BCE, Athens was the leading power of ancient Greece. It was a wealthy trading state, the center of Greek arts and culture, and a naval power that had successfully led the Delian League alliance in the defeat of the mighty Persian Empire.

In the Peloponnesian War with its rival Sparta, however, Athens was struck by the plague in 430 BC. Believed by modern scholars to have been an outbreak of typhoid from North Africa, the illness decimated Athens’ population, depleted its military personnel, and even took the life of its most effective leader, Pericles. Prior to the outbreak, Athens appeared on the verge of victory, but weakened by the affliction, it sued for a temporary peace in 421 BC. When the fighting resumed, Athens was eventually defeated and its democratic form of government overthrown by the victorious Spartans.

El Salvador president in Beijing

State Department cheers as El Salvador joins China’s belt-and-road

President Trump said he would restore the Monroe Doctrine, but the State Department hasn’t received the message.

Communist China is laying a new anchor in the hemisphere: El Salvador.

This week, Beijing officially began treating El Salvador as a virtual extension of its colonial eurasian Belt-and-Road Initiative.

In an important University of Louisville speech earlier this week on hemispheric diplomacy, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo singled out Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, one of the world’s only millennial heads of state, calling him an “amazing new leader.”

At that very moment, Bukele was jetting to Beijing as the world’s only democratically elected leader to make a state visit to the Chinese capital during the Hong Kong repression.

While Pompeo dropped a platitude and got the country wrong, saying Bukele was from Ecuador, China pulled out all the stops as the Salvadoran leader flew toward its open arms.

Lots of Chinese goodies El Salvador – and all for free

Beijing gave El Salvador’s previous left-wing FMLN government some shiploads of rice and some reported under-the-table payola. In exchange, El Salvador dumped its 85-year diplomatic relationship with the Republic of China on Taiwan, and recognized Beijing.

Bukele took office last February, openly considering reestablishing relations with Taiwan, at Beijing’s expense. So the Communist Chinese began working on Bukele, sparing no effort.

Bukele tweeted out all the goodies El Salvador would receive under its new relationship with China:

  • “A new National Stadium, modern, big capacity.”
  • “Construction of a new National Library, of crystal, several stories high.”
  • “A great water purification plant.”
  • “The whole system for distribution of potable water and sewage treatment around the beaches of Surf City. A first-world system for a first-world tourism destination.”
  • “The entire circuit of pedestrian streets, sidewalks, parks, boardwalks, underground electrical wiring, along Surf City beaches.”
  • The “total” recovery and restoration of the precolumbian Joya de Ceren archaeological site.
  • “Nine additional cooperation agreements in agriculture, tourism, culture, sports, commerce and technical assistance.”
  • “The restoration and extension of the pier of  Puerto La Libertad, to make it an international tourist attraction, with restaurants, cafes, shops and mechanical games.”

That’s just about it. All gifts from China, and all for free, Bukele said.

Other Salvadorans warned that Beijing was luring their country into a debt trap. Bukele scoffed at the idea. “It’s not a loan, but a donation,” he said.

Bukele, who had been kicked out of the FMLN, took office last February and actively considered restoring El Salvador’s relationship with Taiwan. But Beijing offered more goodies.

The Trump Administration seemed not to pay attention.

So as Bukele jetted to China to seal the deal, Secretary of State Pompeo praised him as “amazing.”

How Beijing buttered Bukele

The Chinese Communist Party showed its careful psychological profiling of foreign leaders to butter them up properly.

It awarded Bukele an honorary doctoral degree. Bukele wasted no time changing his Twitter name to “Dr. Nayib Bukele.”

Communist officials gave Bukele, a major state-level reception with Party leader Xi Jinping, complete with military honor guard. They brought the Salvadoran president, his wife, and infant a private tour of the Forbidden City and a Chinese National Ballet performance sponsored by the Ministry of Culture.

“Each Chinese leader who met President Bukele has reiterated his support for the work that is being done to guarantee the well-being of Salvadorans,” the Salvadoran presidential office said, “and they have provided support to implement the agreements made between him and President Xi Jinping.”